Networking OSX airport through linksys wireless router

Yes, I agree. Forget DHCP and just go with fixed ip addresses. Or disable the  high speed part of the airport extreme card- some waps dont work the switchover well.

Get rid of dhcp first though.It's more secure anyway, why allow any dhcp subscriber to join up? Also , I've got wep working. Despite all the hype, it's not that easy to crack. I've run air snort for days on end, collecting millions of packets, without a crack.

Thanks for your comments so far. It looks like I'm going to need a bit more help filling in the blanks before I'll get this to work, though. Please bear with me. :-)

Okay, my DHCP server is set to allow 50 users, starting at 192.168.1.100 (I know this is a security issue, but I'll limit that after I get this airport thing to work. I don't want to tinker with stuff that may get me further from resolving this particular issue.) According to my clients table, connections 101-104 have been taken. Thus, I should be able to manually set the G4 to IP 192.168.1.105, right? In my system preferences->network->airport window, I manually set IP to equal 192.168.1.105, Subnet mask to equal 255.255.255.0 (which is what all my other network devices use), and the router address to 192.168.1.1.

I'm not sure what to set DNS Servers to. I tried it both blank and with my router IP, but it doesn't seem to work either way.

In any case, I still can't connect to the internet AND the connection to 192.168.1.105 does not show up in my router DHCP client table.

As for the high speed component of the airport card, I'm not sure how I'd go about disabling it. I'm definitely trying to connect to an old-school 802.11b network.

Thanks again fellas!

The user guide for this product can be downloaded at:

ftp://ftp.linksys.com/pdf/befw11s4_v2ug.pdf

This provides much more information than the quick setup guide that came with in the box, but it is about 60 pages.

If you go to a computer that is hardwired to the router and browse to 192.168.1.1 you should be able to get into the HTML router administration program.  It is very intuitive, so don't be scared by it.  
The first page of the set up program should allow you to choose where your router gets its IP address.  This is the External IP address that is assigned by your ISP.  It should say something like "obtain IP addresss automatically" or something like that.  On another spot you define the internal IP# for your router, I believe the default is 192.168.1.1.
There should be a screen, I don't recall exactly what it is called because I'm doing this from memory, but it allows you to define how many clients to allow and what their scope should be.  The computer that you are trying to add needs to have an IP address within that scope.  According to your comments above, your computer should be covered there.  The DNS numbers should come from your ISP.  There should be at least 2 sets of numbers, maybe more.  Perhaps you can get into the settings for the Cable modem to get this info.  Without the DNS numbers, you won't be able to see the internet, but you should be able to see other computers on the network.

In summary, your ISP should push an IP address to the modem and then the router, and provide you with the DNS numbers so that you can browse the internet.  Once those are set, your router then monitors a different set of numbers for the computers inside the network (either set for DHCP or static IP) and divies up the bandwidth between them.  If you can get the DHCP and/or the WEP to work with the Macs I'd like to know how because I'd love to use WEP.

I still haven't figured out out what the correct settings should be for my client G4, tho. Again, I've got other connections that work fine through my router, so I think everything is okay on that front. When I check the router's web based config page, it gives me info for the LAN and the WAN setups. The thing that's confusing is that I am pretty sure that the G4's ip info needs to be set based on the LAN settings of my router (since it is "behind" the router in my network setup), for instance, the 192.168.1.50. However, my router's DNS entries are listed under WAN in my router setup screen. Are these the correct values, then, to use when manually setting up an IP behind the server? It seems like they would be somehow translated by the router hardware before ending up at a LAN computer (my G4).

fhieber, could you do me a favor and check out what your wireless mac setup looks like in terms of ips and stuff, when you get a chance? On my side, I have:

IP address: <some vacant value within those declared in my router's DHCP setup>
Subnet: 255.255.255.0
Router: 192.168.1.1
DNS: <the entries listed for my routers WAN DNS servers>

and again, it still doesn't work (I can't even talk to the router's admin ip from my G4 browser).

If you give me an email address I'll send you some screen shots from the router setup and the mac set up.  I'm new to the Expert Exchange, so I don't think that I can post pictures on here.  I can be reached at ztirffritz@yahoo.com.

Thanks a ton for your email fheiber. I went through my router setup and tried to make it look as close to yours as possible. The only real change I ended up making was adding the DNS entries that showed up under WAN (in setup) to the DNS fields in the DHCP window.

Unfortunately, it's still not working. I'm still not exactly sure what to set DNS as in the client (G4's) airport setup. The funny thing is, when I copy the DNS settings for the router into my G4's DNS window, I swear it's trying to do something when I try to connect to a web page (Last time it told me it could not connect to the router because it got a Posix error -60, which seems kind of intriguing).

I'm beginning to think that this problem may have me beat, I dunno. I know it's not supposed to be this hard, so maybe I have an unsurmountable hardware combination problem or something. :-(

In any case, if anybody (fheiber?) has any other thoughts on stuff I could try, I would sure appreciate it.

Maybe it would help if I took some screenshots if my setup. Can anyone tell me how to take screenshots on a Mac?

In OS X go to Applications/Utilities/Grab.  This little utility gives you a few options for taking screen shots, you can even time them so that you can have a few seconds to open drop-down boxes for the screen capture.

Pre-OS X requires rental of an octupus to press all of the buttons simultaneously...just kidding.  Just look up screen capture in Mac Help.

In Windows, use Ctrl+Print Screen (one of those 3 buttons above "Insert", "Home" and "Page Up" that no one ever uses anymore) to capture the entire screen.  Ctrl+Alt+Print Screen gets just the active window.

Good luck!

Thanks again fhieber. Here are some screen shots (full-res, lookout...) if my G4's setup. Um, if I could mention in advance, if any of you are smart enough to use this info to break into my computers, please don't. Thanks.

http://www.peasej.com/airport1.jpg
router setup screen, Airport TCP/IP settings, Airport Internet Config screen. Some things to note: in the configuration pulldown of the Airport Internet Config screen, Airport is the only option, but it disappears sometimes when I open the dialog. Also, the Network SSID "Wireless" is correct, and is automatically found by Airport. So it's seeing something...

http://www.peasej.com/airport2.jpg
router dhcp screen, router dhcp client table, Airport TCP/IP settings, Airport Internet Config screen. Some things to note: these are the DNS fields that I updated after seeing fhieber's screenshots. Also, the clients showing up in my dhcp client table are my desktop pc (jeff), a laptop pc via wireless (Phet), and the G4 hardwired to the router (blank). The IP I'm trying to set, 192.168.1.105 is conspicuously absent.

http://www.peasej.com/airport3.jpg
Here I just wanted to show you my router status screen, so you can make sure I'm not entering anything really odd in the setup.

Thanks!

I like the disclaimer about being smart enough to hack into your computers.  Rest assurred, no one can until your router works.  

The links above do not work however...they look like they are trying to direct me to something inside your network becuase the address was something like 192.168.1.140:blah blah....that is a private IP address if I'm not mistaken.  It would work if I was inside your network but until we get your router working, we won't be able to hack into it, or see your pictures.  I'm not a networking guru or anything like that, I just like computers.  I want to learn how to set up a web site inside my network that can be viewed from outside my network.  I think that it has something to do with port thingys (that is the technical term right?), but I've not figured it out yet...

No, those are all actually on a public server. Hmm... maybe you are behind a firewall or something?

Those addresses should eventually resolve to:
http://www.jesush.com/peasej/airport1.jpg

so that might be something else to try...

according to those pix, you still have dhcp active. did you try disabling it?

I agree, turn off DHCP first.  I had very similar problems initially.  Somehow it works now, but I don't trust it yet.

I was unenthusiastic about disabling DHCP since I thoght manually entering all the information for my various machines. Oh well...

Okay, it still doesn't work. :-)

I was able to get all my wired connections back up and running, but the G4 still won't connect to anything when I turn off the wired connection. At least this lets me know I was on the right track in terms of entering DNS info for the G4 TCP/IP client...

Some more pictures for you:

http://www.peasej.com/airport21.jpg
updated router DHCP screen, Wired TCP/IP settings, Airport Internet Config screen. This connection works...

http://www.peasej.com/airport22.jpg
updated router dhcp screen, Airport TCP/IP settings, Airport Internet Config screen. This one doesn't.

Any other ideas? :-)

Try resetting the router-unplug it, hold down the reset button while you turn on the power, continue holding the reset button until the little light blinks.

the linksys has a lot of other features that can screw up a network connection. I am not familiar with this particular product, but the consumer grade routers are often a 'little' off spec when it comes to hardware implementation. That's why some pcmcia cards dont work well with certain routers. Try disabling the 'g' hispeed wireless function. Can this be done on this router?

Also, disconnect ANY wireless phones in the house. UNPLUG THEM ALL. I had a similar problem with my 2.4 ghz phone and i moved back to a 900 mhz phone to solve similar wireless connectivity issues.

Record your settings if you try to reset the router.  Pressing the reset button for I think 10 seconds resets it to factory condition.  I'm not sure if it dumps the firmware updates.  I doubt it, but it might.

Have you figured this out yet?

Sorry for the delay on this. I've succumbed to AirPort despair. :-)

I reset the router (the firmware wasn't altered, BTW, just the settings). The only effect this seemed to have was my airport card immediately found the new "linksys" network as opposed to the old "Wireless", but still no dice in terms of my internet connection. I tried both with and without DHCP. The rest of my computers still seem to work with the manual ip's I entered after a previous exercise.

This router is not G enabled, it's just old school B, so I guess the extreme card should be switching to the slower speed. I do have a wireless phone, but it's a 900 MHz.

I'm getting pretty close to concluding that this is a lost cause. Anybody have any other ideas? Otherwise, I'll probably just close out this question tomorrow (giving points for effort, thanks guys...)

I don't have an airport Extreme card, just the old style Airport card.  Is there a setting to switch manually between G and B?  I have never even looked for that.  Do you have another Airport card that you could try, or an Apple dealer near by that you could try out another Airport card?  Do you know anyone with a functioning Airport base station that you could try connecting to?  I know that this should work, so I don't want to give up yet.

At, last, a breakthrough. Sort of.

I haven't really messed with my settings, but I finally got fed up with AirPort to the point where I decided to turn off ethernet and leave AirPort on to see if it would "click". It sort of did. When I got up this morning, I had a new email that had been sent at 6:24 this morning. I have since confirmed that the usual e-mail connection messages (connecting to server blah, sending password, checking for unseen messages...) seem to be showing up at the right times. Sometimes I still get connection errors on e-mail, but 7/8 of the time, it seems to work fine, if slowly.

I still haven't ever gotten a webpage to load through AirPort. Maybe if I just leave it for another day. :-)

Anybody know what's going on?

If you can get email but not get on the internet, it sounds like something is wrong with the DNS settings on the Mac.  I can't really help you much because I can't see your screen shots while I'm at work, but it sounds like you can connect to your ISP's email server but your Mac is not resolving addresses to the correct DNS address for the internet.  I hope that I'm not running over old ground, but I would try "ipconfig /all" at the cmd prompt on one of the wireless PCs and compare the info to what is on the Mac and make sure that it is the same since you said that the PCs can get on the internet, but the Mac can not.  Can you ping the DNS servers at your ISP from your Mac?  Try doing traceroute to a web address on the Mac to see where the connection is getting dropped.  If you go to Applications/Utilities/Network Utilities (I think this is what it is called) there is a program on the Mac that will allow you to run traceroutes and Ping commands to trouble shoot your connection.  Try pinging everything under the sun to determine what you can and can't hit.  Try pinging other computers in your network (the router is working) try pinging the mail server (you can get out of the network), try pinging the DNS servers.  If you can't hit the DNS servers, do a traceroute and see where the connection is failing.  And start there.  Perhaps your ISP has something set incorrectly that is blocking you from accessing the DNS servers.  I found with my ISP that if I set the password to anything other than numbers their mail server will not recognize my Mac.  It is really weird.  If I have a passord of "abcdefg" it will not work, but if I use "12345" it will work.  I don't know if that is a problem for the Mac or their server, but it is a problem either way.

Okay, lads, we're getting there. I took fhieber's advice and started pinging stuff. It found the router, it found another computer on the network, and it was actually able to ping an outside url (vmtco.com, my mail server). I went back and tried to connect to EE, and, after a huge wait, it loaded!

Then when I went back to ping more stuff, I started to pay more attention to the # of packets that are getting returned, and I'm getting huge packet losses:

100 pings to router (which is literally 4 feet away) -> 70% packet loss
100 pings to another computer on the network -> 68% packet loss
100 pings to vmtco.com -> 84% packet loss

When I repeat the pings to the router, the results seem to vary between 70% and 95% packet loss. Given this, I suppose it makes sense that things seem sluggish.

Given the above, I thought that either my airport card or my router must have something very wrong with them, as in, something must be physically broken somewhere. Since I had never actually seen my airport card work correctly, I just took my laptop down to my local Apple Store to use it with their AirPort network. It popped up just fine on their wireless network. Lovely.

I doubt my Linksys base station is broken, since I use a PC laptop to connect to it wirelessly without problems on a daily basis.

Now I think I'm thinking interference or something, but the stupid thing doesn't seem to work anywhere in my apartment, when the PC laptop is fairly bulletproof in this respect.

Weird.

My router is a v.2 as opposed to a v.4 (although it's always seemed odd to me that they have version numbers right in the model number of a piece of electronics), but at this point, I'm willing to concede that I've probably exhausted my options for my connection. I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do to fix this, but my preferred option would be to scrap the router and replace it with AirPort Extreme, because, after all, Apple stuff just works. Not for me mind you, but apparently for lots of other people... :-)

Thanks again for all your help on this. I'm going to try to figure out how to split the points between you guys, since you both hung in there.

I just wanted to mention that, when I tried to go in and award you guys points, the site stopped responding to me.

The message? The equipment knows you're telling me to get rid of it. In the future, I must remember to use an outside network when the conversation might turn to scrapping my networking stuff.

Just out of curiosity, how do you split the points?  Every time that I've asked a question I am only able to accept 1 answer.

There was a menu towards the bottom of this page with a couple of options on it, and one of them was "Split Points". After clicking this, it gives you another screen where you can divide the points between posters and give a grade.

You want to basically avoid the "Accept Answer" buttons when you are splitting points. When you split points, just track down that split points link. EE takes it from there.

Check here for the solution to the problem you are experiencing.
http://davidakin.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2003/12/13/9193.html

Why don't you switch the extreme wireless card out for an older card and see if that works.  If it does, at least you will know of what the issues are and you can make some decisions.

I have a reverse problem; maybe someone has an answer.

My Airport Express has no problem handing out IP numbers to the three Macs in its wi-fi range, but the one PC with a Linksys WMP54G card can't get an IP address no matter how hard I try.  I always gets a self-assigned 169.254.x.x number instead.  Changing to a static IP and forcing the PC to be at 10.0.1.5 (the next available number) did no good either (probably for lack of the correct MAC address?)  

That's my dilemma.  Help, please?